


they were kids that i once knew

by nevernevergirl



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:03:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: They were friends because their parents were friends. They'd grown up together, but they were growing out of each other, too. Even so, hanging out during Pride meeting has always been tradition—the kind you want to cling to, until you can't anymore.Gertchase-centric pre-canon fic exploring how the runaways in general and Gert and Chase in particular fell apart after Amy's death.





	they were kids that i once knew

**Author's Note:**

> idk i can't stop thinking about alex being the "first crack" and karolina's comment about how they would have probably grown apart so this is my take on it being slow burn sadness lmao. title from dead hearts by stars.

_ 2015 _

 

“I dare you to kiss Gert.”

 

Molly crosses her arms over her chest, smiling smugly. Gert arches an eyebrow, giving her sister her best  _ fucking try me, kid _ stare, and Molly falters just slightly before sitting up straighter. 

 

“What? Chase picked dare.”

 

Of course he did. Chase always picks dare, because Chase, is like, the biggest idiot she knows, and his self-preservation instinct is next-to-zero. Gert means that in the nicest way possible (most of the time), but it’s true. The thing is, she borrowed one of Molly’s necklaces without asking this morning (her favorite, apparently, even though Gert can’t remember the last time she wore it,  _ and  _ she left it in Gert’s room, so it’s totally fair game), so Molly’s in a vindictive mood. 

 

Gert rolls her eyes. “Veto.”

 

“You can’t veto,” Nico says, not looking up from her phone. 

 

“She’s right. You get a veto once a game on your own turn,” Alex says. “That’s the rule.”

 

“The rules aren’t federal law, Alex, you made them up when we were seven because Chase tried to make you eat a worm,” Gert mutters. 

 

“It does kind of involve her, guys.”

 

“Thank you, Karolina,” Gert says, primly. “Exactly.”

 

“Guys, it’s literally truth or dare, chill. This kind of shit’s probably why Amy ditched tonight,” Nico says, rolling her eyes.

 

Molly frowns. “Does she really not want to hang out with us anymore?”

 

“Of course not, Molly,” Karolina says. 

 

“I mean, she’s older than us,” Gert shrugs. “She has a car. She probably has better places to go, right?”

 

Alex frowns. “I mean, I know this is kind of lame, but it’s tradition, right?”

 

“You think it’s lame?” Molly asks, pouting a little. 

 

Nico sighs. “Amy’s in, like. A billion AP classes. She said she has a test tomorrow, it’s not that big of a deal. Chase, just kiss Gert and get it over with.”

 

Gert  _ knows _ she doesn’t mean it like that, but right now, she kind of wishes she’d skipped the Pride meeting, too. 

 

“Screw the rule, I’m not kissing her if she doesn’t want to,” Chase says, and she startles a little. She didn’t realize it until just now, but he’d been quiet the whole time they were arguing. She tries not to think too much about what that means. She always thinks too much, and it’s always over nothing, especially with Chase.

 

“Whatever,” she says. Her face feels hot, and she really, really hopes her cheeks aren’t red. “It’s fine. I was just messing with Molly.”

 

Molly rolls her eyes, but apparently she’s decided she’s avenged her necklace enough, because she doesn’t try to argue.

 

Chase raises his eyebrows. “You sure?”

 

Gert rolls her eyes and pushes herself up off her chair. It’s easy; she’s in drama club. Sometimes, when she has to do something that sucks, she just pretends she’s acting, and it’s not actually her who’s doing it. She’s had to do all sorts of embarrassing shit during improv—this is nothing.

 

She walks over to Chase, sitting on the couch next to him. He’s smirking a little now, and her stomach swoops.

 

Yep. Totally easy. Absolutely fine.

 

He leans in; her hair is falling over her shoulder, kind of in her face, and he reaches over and pushes it back, out of the way, and oh holy shit she is going to die _ , _ and then come back as a zombie, and she’s going to walking dead the shit out of her little sister, what the fuck. 

 

And then Chase kisses her on the cheek.

 

“Oh, come on,” Nico groans.

 

Chase is grinning smugly when he pulls back. “What? That was the dare, right?”

 

Alex shrugs. “Technically, yeah.”

 

Chase holds up his hand for a high five. Gert pushes down, like, fifty weird feelings, and high fives him back. 

 

“Smooth, Stein,” she mutters, and he looks super proud of himself. She’s sort of pissed, she thinks, but she’s not really sure who she’s pissed at. She has to admit it was pretty smart. 

 

“Yeah, I know,” he shrugs. “I got your back, right?”

 

She smiles a little. “Right.”

 

He grins and shifts away from her a little, settling back against the couch. 

 

“Karolina,” he calls out. “Truth or Dare?”

 

Gert’s face still feels so hot. 

  
  
  
  
  


Gert’s avoiding him.

 

Well. Chase is pretty sure she’s avoiding him. It’s not like they really hang out much at school anymore; they haven’t really been in the same group of friends since, like, 6th or 7th grade, outside of the other kids they grew up with. But he usually sees her between classes, and most days they walk to third period together. 

 

He hopes she’s not pissed about that stupid dare last night. He’d thought kissing her on the cheek was okay—obviously she hadn’t wanted to kiss him, but he’s known Gert for longer than he can remember, and sometimes, when she gets embarrassed, she just kind of fakes it. Like when they were kids, she’d been afraid to jump off the diving board in Karolina’s pool. And then one day, he called her a chicken, so she’d jumped in anyway. 

 

He didn’t want her to feel like she had to kiss him anyway. He probably should have said something before everyone started embarrassing her. He’s not really sure why he didn’t. He’d been kind of thrown off by  _ Molly _ , of all people, giving him that dumb dare in the first place, probably. 

 

“Chase? Are you even listening?”

 

He frowns, glance at his side. Eiffel’s looking at up at him, with an annoyed expression on her face. 

 

“Um. Yeah?” he tries, and she raises her eyebrows. He smiles a little sheepishly. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

 

She still looks a little annoyed, but she smiles at him, so he figures they’re probably okay. “Just that my parents are going out of town this weekend, if you’re free?” 

 

He grins. “Wide open.”

 

She grins back and he shifts forwards a little, ready to lean down—and then he sees a flash of Gert’s bookbag, bobbing through the crowd as she heads out the door. 

 

He pulls away from Eiffel, touching her elbow lightly. 

 

“Hey, I have to go. Text you later?”

 

He hears her say  _ yeah, sure _ as he walks away, trying to catch up with Gert.

 

“Yo, Gert,” he calls out, walking outside. She stops and looks up, shaking her bangs out of her eyes. 

 

“Chase, hey,” she says, and her smile looks normal, so maybe she wasn’t mad or avoiding him or whatever. He relaxes a little, walking up to her.

 

“Hey. Didn’t see you earlier.”

 

Gert frowns. “Oh. Yeah, I was waiting for Nico after English, she borrowed my biology notes last night. Have you seen her at all today? I was supposed to get a ride with her and Amy, but neither of them are answering my texts.”

 

“No, she wasn’t in history,” he shrugs. “Maybe their mom took their phones again?”

 

“Maybe,” Gert says, sighing. “I still need a ride. Guess I should call my mom.”

 

“You can come with me,” he shrugged. “I don’t have practice, I was going to walk over to Timely and do homework.”

 

His dad’s working from his home lab today. Chase still has to be home by dinner, but the less time he has to be there, the better. 

 

Gert smiles, pushing her hair back behind her ear. “Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”

 

He grins. “Good. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about last night—”

 

Gert’s not paying attention to him anymore, though. She’s frowning, looking over his shoulder. He turns to see what she’s looking at.

 

“I thought you said Amy was giving you a ride,” he says, confused. Mrs. Yorkes has just pulled up in the car rider lane, and he can see Molly already in the passenger’s seat.

 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she mutters, absently, walking toward the car. Chase frowns and follows her; he’s not sure why, but everything suddenly feels really, really weird.

 

Gert stands at the edge of the curb, waiting until her mother rolls down the window. 

 

“Hi, sweetie. Hi, Chase.”

 

“Hi, Mrs. Yorkes,” he says, politely. Molly looks as confused as Gert does, but Mrs. Yorkes looks upset, and her eyes are kind of red. His stomach swoops.

 

“Mom,” Gert says, and her voice sounds off, so he guesses he’s not the only one feeling weird right now. “I thought I was going home with Amy and Nico.”

 

Mrs. Yorkes inhales, sharply.

 

“I’ll explain when we get home, okay?” She bites her lip. “Chase, honey, why don’t you come with us? I’ll let your mom know.”

 

He exchanges a glance with Gert, and she bites her lip.

 

Yeah. Something really, really weird is going on.

  
  
  
  


This has been the worst week of Gert’s entire life. 

 

She feels like she’s emotionally blacked out for most of it, because she’s already remembering it in bright, awful, disconnected flashes: the near-silent car ride home, her mom fiddling with the air conditioning absently everytime they hit a red light. Chase’s knee knocking against hers on the couch as they waited for her parents to explain what was going on. Her dad pacing and stumbling over the words. Molly crawling into her bed that night, where the both of them stayed up crying for hours. 

 

Her mom said she could skip school yesterday if she wanted, but she had a test in Biology. She doesn’t think she did very well; Nico still has her notes. None of it feels like it matters.

 

Today’s the funeral. That feels quick, like Mr. and Mrs. Minoru just wanted to get it over with, but she’s not sure what the average timeline is for something like this. She’s pretty sure the last funeral she went to was for Molly’s parents, and she doesn’t remember much of it. She’d been old enough to understand what  _ dead _ meant, and it had been sad and sort of scary, but she’d been a little kid. It still felt sort of far away from her. 

 

This is Amy. This is so, so close. 

 

At the service, her mom ushers her and Molly next to Karolina, giving them this sad sort of smile as she kisses the tops of their heads and goes to stand behind them with her dad and the other parents. She thinks it’s supposed to be, like, a nice thing? Like, hey, you don’t have to sit with your boring parents, you can hang out with your friends!

 

When Molly’s parents died, and they had the wake at her house, her parents had pulled down every board game they owned, and they’d all gotten to eat dessert for lunch. She remembers thinking that was kind of cool, so she guesses it was a pretty good call for a bunch of little kids.

 

But they’re not six any more. She slides in next to Karolina; when she glances at Nico, at the front with her parents, Karo laces their fingers together loosely. Chase joins them a minute later, looking around and leaning over Molly’s head to whisper to her.

 

“Where’s Alex?”

 

Gert exchanges a glance with Karolina. Mr. and Mrs. Wilder are here, standing next to Mrs. Stein. 

 

“Bathroom?” she tries. 

 

Chase frowns. “Yeah, maybe.”

 

Molly’s eyebrows knit together. “You don’t think anything happened to him, do you?”

 

“No,” Gert says, automatically, because Molly’s her baby sister, and as sort of functionally useless as she’s been this week, she can still do that much.

 

“Of course not,” Karolina says, because she’s Karolina and she means it.

 

Chase frowns.

 

“He’s probably in the bathroom,” he repeats. 

 

Molly accepts it, because she’s 12, and probably because she wants to. Gert catches Chase’s eye; he’s still fidgeting, and her stomach flips.

 

Alex never shows. Not before the service starts and not during and not after when they’re all lingering as their parents make small talk before heading out to the Minoru house.

 

Karolina’s busy distracting  _ her _ sister, because Gert’s stupid brain still can’t focus or handle anything, when she notices Chase slipping away with his mom’s car keys in hand. Gert frowns, following him. When he ducks into the back seat of the car, she bites her lip and goes after him, rapping her knuckles against the window. He makes a face, but unlocks the door.

 

“Hey,” she mumbles, sliding in next to him.

 

“Hey.” He doesn’t look at her; he pulls out his phone, frowning at the screen for a second before typing something quickly.

 

Gert makes a face. “Did you seriously just leave a  _ funeral  _ to go check your phone? Your snap streak can wait, asshole.”

 

“The funeral’s over, don’t be a dick,” Chase mutters. “And it’s not like that.”

 

“You’re literally sending a text, it’s exactly that.”

 

“I was supposed to hang out with Eiffel today,” he sighs. “I guess she forgot I can’t anymore.”

 

“How does she forget you’re at your friend’s funeral?”

 

“I don’t know,” he mutters, irritatedly shoving his phone in his pocket. “She didn’t really know Amy.”

 

“Yeah, but she knows you,” Gert says, insistently. She’s not sure why it matters, but she can’t stop herself. “She’s your girlfriend, right?”

 

“I guess.”

 

“What does that mean? She either is or she isn’t.”

 

Chase rolls his eyes and kicks at the back of the driver’s seat, ignoring her. “I can’t believe Alex didn’t show up.”

 

Gert sighs. “I heard Mrs. Wilder tell my mom that he hasn’t really left his room since it happened.”

 

Chase shrugs. “The rest of us came out of our rooms. The rest of us are here.”

 

“Yeah,” she said, quietly. “Yeah, I know.”

 

“It’s a shitty thing to do,” he mutters. “This whole fucking thing is shitty.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” she repeats. Chase shrugs and pulls a bottle out of his jacket; it’s sort of not surprising, because Chase figured out how to pick the lock on the Wilders’ liquor cabinet in 7th grade. She watches him, taking a deep breath. “Can I have some of that?”

 

He raises her eyebrows. “It’s whiskey.”

 

“No shit, Sherlock. I can read a label.”

 

Chase rolls his eyes. “You don’t drink.”

 

“Yeah. I’m 14. And I’m not an idiot,” she says, and she looks at Chase pointedly, but she’s too tired to be mean about it. She gives up and shrugs. “I think maybe today I drink.”

 

Chase is quiet for a second before he hands over the bottle. When she takes a drink, she thinks she maybe takes too much; it burns, and it kind of makes her choke. Chase takes the bottle back and rubs her back a little, like he expected that.

 

He doesn’t make fun of her.

 

She wishes he’d make fun of her. 

 

She’s so fucking tired. 

 

“That was disgusting,” she mumbled.

 

“Not really about the taste,” he sighed.

 

“Yeah, I got that,” she mumbled. “Do you think our parents would even care if they caught us right now?”

 

Chase snorts. “Do  _ you  _ really care if they do?”

 

“I usually care about whether I’m going to get grounded, yeah.”

 

“Right now’s not really the same as usually.”

 

She bites her lip. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

 

When she holds out her hand, he takes it.

  
  
  
  


Chase is steadily approaching shitfaced.

 

He’d kept the bottle of whiskey on him at the wake, and he’d passed it back and forth with Gert most of the night. They’d finished it up by the end, so when he’d gotten home, he’d snuck into the study to raid his mom’s stash in the bar. She’d seen him sneaking in, but she’d just kind of sighed and given him a  _ gentle reminder _ that Dad was still up and working in his lab.

 

So, yeah. Definitely close to shitfaced. 

 

He stares at his phone, thumb hovering over the contact screen, before pressing the call button. He holds his breath while it rings. And rings. And—

 

_ Hey, it’s Alex. I mean, actually, it’s not Alex, because this is my voicemail, obviously, but— _

 

Chase groans, hanging up and dropping his phone onto his bed.

 

“Mother fucker,” he mumbles, rolling over and reaching for the glass on his nightstand. When the knock comes at the window, he almost falls off the bed.

 

Gert’s standing on the balcony outside his bedroom window, with her long hair pulled up into a messy ponytail and wearing her pajamas with purple Doc Martens. 

 

Chase smiles for a second before his drunken brain slowly catches up enough to remember this is weird. He stumbles off of his bed, going to unlatch the window; Gert climbs in, wiping her hands against her pants as if she’s brushing dirt off of them. It’s kind of funny to him, so he laughs, because, like. The housekeeper was just here this morning, there’s not even any dirt. Also, it’s probably just funny because he’s drunk.

 

Gert glares. “What?”

 

“Nothing,” he says, quickly, holding up his hands. “How’d you know how to get up here?”

 

She crosses her arms over her chest, hunching her shoulders up a little. “You showed me last year. When we were doing that astronomy project. There’s a ladder from the roof to—”

 

“To the balcony, yeah,” he nods. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweats, and then they’re just both kind of standing there, not saying anything.

 

“Are you still drinking?” Gert asks, abruptly. He follows her gaze to his mom’s bottle of scotch perched on his desk.  

 

“Not, like. Right at this moment,” he says, like an idiot.

 

“Chase,” she says, and she sounds worried, which kind of pisses him off. It’s not like he doesn’t know he’s kind of fucked and definitely stupid, you know? She sounds worried like she thinks he doesn’t  _ know _ .

 

He flops back down on his bed, glaring at her. “Whatever. You snuck out of your house,” he mutters petulantly. 

 

“You don’t know that I snuck out.”

 

He raises an eyebrow and she sighs, going over to sit on the edge of his bed.

 

“Okay, yeah,” she mumbles. “Karolina called to see if I’d come over. She didn’t want to be alone, I guess.”

 

“Oh. Then why’d you come here?” he asks, frowning as he sits up. 

 

Gert bites her lip, shrugging.

 

“It’s just kind of weird,” she says, finally. “I mean, she’s my friend. Obviously. But it’s not like we hang out like we used to when we were kids.”

 

Chase nods a little. He hadn’t realized it until he’d pulled up their text thread to check on him early, but the last time he’d sent a text to Alex before that had been to ask about the English homework two weeks ago.

 

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

 

“I just. Haven’t really hung out with her outside of the group lately,” she continues, rambling. “And it’s not like it would have been a big deal, like, a week ago, but now I know we’re talking and hanging out because of—”

 

“Yeah. I get it,” he says, quietly, and for the first time possibly  _ ever _ , Gert doesn’t snap at him for cutting her off. She just nods. “So I’m your buffer?”

 

She rolls her eyes and he nudges her a little, which makes her just barely smile, so that feels good. “Yeah. Molly was asleep, so.”

 

“Ouch. Second choice,” he says, but he grins a little. “Hey. How come you don’t have a problem hanging out with me?”

 

“What?” She looks up at him, frowning. 

 

“You said it would be weird hanging out with Karolina alone. You were alone with me most of today. And you came here alone,” he shrugs. “I mean, we haven’t hung out that much this year.”

 

“We walk to class together sometimes,” she says, biting her lip. “It’s not like I don’t want to hang out with her. Or you, or any one. We just….all have our own shit, right?”

 

“Right,” he sighs. “Like lacrosse.” 

 

“And drama club,” she says, nodding. “I guess I just hadn’t realized how different it was now. I’m just getting in my head about it, it’s stupid.”

 

“No, it’s not,” he says, and she gives him a small smile. He takes a deep breath.  “Let me get my shoes, okay?”

 

“Yeah, okay. I’ll call a Lyft.”

 

Chase nods, getting up. His phone buzzes on the bed, and he picks it up, glancing at the screen.

 

_ Alex: i’m sorry. _

 

“Chase? Everything okay?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, slipping his phone into his pocket. He’s starting to get a headache; probably from all the drinking. “Yeah, let’s go.”

 

Alex can wait. 


End file.
